Chapter Three: What I Warned You About

Chapter Three: What I Warned You About

Elara

I made it half a block before my heel caught in a crack in the pavement.

My ankle rolled and the sidewalk tilted. A hand closed around my elbow and held me up. I didn't have to look. The heat came straight through my sleeve, and I yanked away so hard I nearly fell anyway.

"Don't."

"You were about to hit the ground," Cassian said.

"Then I'd have hit the ground. It's not your damn business."

He let go. He stood under the streetlight with his jacket hanging from one hand, half his face in shadow. I braced myself. I knew this part. This was where he told me I was embarrassing myself, that I was being dramatic, that I should stop making Lucien's friends uncomfortable.

Six years of cold looks and answers that made it obvious he didn't want me around.

"It's past midnight," he said. "You're in heels. Let me drive you home."

I stared at him. "Why?"

"Because you shouldn't be out here alone."

"Since when do you care?" I folded my arms tight. "I don't want a lecture, Cassian. I can't take one tonight. If you're going to call me pathetic, say it now, because I can't sit in a car with you and wait for it."

Something crossed his face and was gone before I could name it.

"I'm not going to say that."

"You've said worse."

He didn't argue. That was so strange I almost stepped back. He just stood there and took it.

"I'm only here to make sure you get home safe," he said quietly. "That's all. I won't say a word you don't want to hear. You have my word."

I searched his face for the trick. There wasn't one. Just tired eyes and a jaw locked so tight it looked painful.

"Two drinks," I said finally. "I had two drinks, and watching my husband kiss that woman burned them right off me. I'm not drunk. I wish I were."

"I know."

"Did you laugh? Back there? Everyone else did."

"No."

"Lucien said you can't stand being in the same room with me."

He was quiet for a long second. "I didn't laugh."

It wasn't a denial. Some far-off part of my brain noticed that, the way you notice a bruise hours after you got it.

The wind cut through my dress. I wrapped my arms tighter, and he held out the jacket without a word.

"I don't want your jacket."

"You're shaking."

"I said no."

He didn't push it at me and he didn't pull it back. He just stood there with his arm out. My feet hurt, my phone was at three percent, and I couldn't read the ride app through my tears.

"Fine," I muttered, and took it.

It was still warm. It smelled like cedar and smoke. I hated how good it felt.

---

His car was quiet in the way expensive cars are. The city slid past in streaks of wet light, and I kept my eyes on the window and my guard up. I kept waiting for the cold remark, the sigh.

It never came.

My phone buzzed in my lap.

MARA: where are you

MARA: They locked me in an office!!! i will burn this place down

MARA: ELLIE ANSWER ME

I typed with stiff fingers. 

I'm okay. Getting a ride home. Don't do anything.

The reply came in two seconds. WITH WHO.

I turned the phone face down. "Mara. She's locked in a back room because of me."

"They'll let her out when she calms down."

"Have you ever seen Mara calm down?"

The corner of his mouth moved and vanished before I was sure I'd seen it. "She threw a glass in a woman's face in front of the people there."

"She did, didn't she?" A laugh jumped out of me, wet and ugly. "She said she'd break that woman's nose."

"I'd have paid to watch."

I turned my head and stared at him. His profile gave nothing away, just the hard line of his jaw in the dashboard glow. But he'd said it out loud. Cassian Rooke, who answered my hellos with a nod at the wall.

I checked my phone again, because some stupid part of me had to.

Nothing from Lucien. Not one call.

"He doesn't even know I left," I said. "He's probably still up there with her."

"Elara."

"Don't be nice to me." I pressed my palms against my eyes. "It's the one thing I could always count on with you."

"I'm not being nice." His voice came out low and rough. "Breathe."

I breathed.

At my house, he parked, got out, and walked me to the door without a word. I unlocked it on the first try. The lamp in the dining room was still on, and through the window I could see the melted candles and the plates.

"Lock it behind you," he said. "I'll wait until I hear it."

"Come in."

He went still. "No."

"Cassian." I held the door open. My heart was pounding so hard I thought he could hear it. "I'm not asking you to drive me anywhere. I'm asking you to come in."

"Elara..."

"If you're going to be cruel, don't bother." My voice shook. "If I hear one cold thing from you tonight, I'll throw you out myself."

He looked at me for a very long time, like a man at the edge of a drop.

"I won't be cruel," he said.

He stepped over the threshold. I shut the door behind him.

---

Cassian

Get out.

It was the only clear thought in my head. Turn around. Get out of this house.

I didn't move.

Elara kicked off her heels by the door and walked into the dining room in her bare feet. She stopped at the table and looked at it like a crime scene. Her back was straight, her arms crossed, and every few seconds she glanced over her shoulder at me, checking, waiting. Her guard was up. Of course it was. I had spent six years teaching her to flinch.

"Two plates," she said. "Two glasses. I ironed the tablecloth, Cassian. Who irons a tablecloth?"

"Elara..."

"I woke up at five to bake the cake. I made lasagna from scratch because it's his favorite. I curled my hair twice." Her voice was steady, and somehow that made it worse. She wasn't crying anymore. She was furious. "And he went to a club and sat between two women and forgot I existed."

She walked into the kitchen. I followed and stopped in the doorway, hands shoved in my pockets because I didn't trust them anywhere else.

She pulled a cake out of the fridge. It was small and lopsided, with her name piped across the top in careful blue letters. She set it on the counter and stared at it.

"I wanted him to be surprised, it was my birthday but still i wanted to surprise him"

"He's an idiot," I said. It came out rough.

"He's my husband." She laughed without humor. "That's the worst part."

Husband.

I grabbed the word and held it like a rope. Lucien's wife. You've sat at his table a hundred times. Look at the floor. Look at the damn floor.

I looked at the floor.

It lasted about four seconds.

She leaned back against the counter, and my jacket, which she still hadn't taken off, slid down her arms and fell open. Under it the green dress clung to her waist and hips, thin fabric that moved every time she breathed. One strap had slipped off her shoulder. Her hair had come loose and lay in waves down her back. Her mouth was red and swollen from crying.

Stop it. I dragged my eyes up to the cabinets. You're a grown man.

"Do you know what he said about this dress?" she asked. "He said it made me look like trouble. I thought he meant it as a compliment. I'm thirty-one years old, and I have never been trouble once in my life."

"You should sit down."

"I'm not tired." She peeled back the plastic on the cake, dragged her finger through the frosting, and put it in her mouth.

My whole body locked.

Her lips closed around her fingertip. Her tongue slid across it, slow and unhurried, while she stared at the cake like she'd forgotten anyone else was in the room. Heat hit me low and hard, so fast my vision narrowed.

Son of a bitch.

I pressed my palm against the wall behind me, hard enough to hurt. Her husband just humiliated her in front of a crowd, and you're standing here getting hard because she licked frosting off her finger. You sick bastard.

It didn't help. Every time I said it, the heat got worse. I had kept it locked up for six years.

"It's good," she said, looking at me over her shoulder. "Want some?"

"No."

"You sound strange."

"I'm fine."

"You look at me a lot, you know." She turned around and leaned against the counter again, studying me. She was watching for a crack, waiting for the old Cassian to come back. "Across the table, when you think I'm busy. I always assumed it was disgust."

The kitchen went quiet. I could hear the refrigerator humming. I could hear my own pulse.

"Go to bed, Elara."

"I'm not going to bed."

"It's late. You're exhausted."

"I'm wide awake." She pushed off the counter and walked toward me, slowly, her bare feet silent on the tile. "Want to know something? I'm not drunk. I haven't been for an hour. I know exactly where I am and exactly who you are."

"Stop there."

She didn't.

"Elara." My voice cracked. "Stop."

She stopped a foot away. Close enough that I could smell vanilla and frosting and something warm underneath that was just her. My hands curled into fists inside my pockets.

She's your best friend's wife.

"Why?" she asked quietly.

I couldn't answer. My jaw ached from holding it shut.

I couldn't. I had no more lies. I stood there with my jaw locked and my heart slamming and the truth sitting in my throat.

She watched me the way you watch a dog you're not sure will bite. Then she lifted her hand and laid her palm flat against my chest.

My heartbeat went wild under her fingers.

I watched her feel it. I watched her lips part. She had come in braced for ice, and what she'd found was a man burning alive.

I caught her wrist. I meant to pull her hand away. My fingers closed around her pulse instead, and I held her there.

"It's taking everything I have," I said, low and rough. "Step away."

"I understand."

"Then step away."

"No."

"Elara..."

"I know I'm using you. I know it isn't fair. But for one night, I don't want to be the woman who waited. I don't want to hear that song. I don't want to see that red dress every time I close my eyes." She swallowed. "I want to feel something that isn't shame. And you were the only person in that whole room who didn't laugh."

The words went through me like a knife.

"You can hate me for it tomorrow," she said. "You're good at that."

"I don't hate you." It tore out of me before I could stop it. "I never did."

Her eyes went wide. For one heartbeat, neither of us breathed.

Then she slid my jacket off her shoulders and let it drop. It hit the floor between us. My gaze fell before I could stop it, to the bare line of her shoulder, the loose strap, the dip of her collarbone where her pulse beat. I watched her swallow.

She took my hand from her wrist and set it on her waist.

Every muscle in my body went rigid. My fingers flexed against the thin green fabric, and through it I felt her warmth, the curve of her, the tremor of her breath. Lucien's wife,I told myself desperately. You cannot.

"Elara," I said hoarsely. "Stop."

"Make me."

She rose onto her toes. Her breath brushed my cheek. She slid her free hand up my chest, over my collar, into the hair at the back of my neck, and I shook.

"Last chance," I ground out. "Step back. Now."

She leaned in until her lips touched the shell of my ear.

"No," she whispered.

And she ran her tongue slowly along the edge of my earlobe.

Something in me broke.

It wasn't clean. Six years of discipline gave way at once, a hairline crack and then nothing left standing. The sound that tore out of me didn't belong to any man I knew. My hand tightened on her waist. My other hand fisted in her hair and tilted her face back so I could see her.

Her eyes were dark and wide. Her lips were parted. She was breathing as hard as I was.

Every reason I'd ever listed was still there. His wife. My friend. Her home. I had spent six years carving them into myself.

I couldn't remember one of them.

I backed her against the counter. She gasped as her hips hit the edge, and I caged her in with both arms, my body hard against hers, my mouth an inch from her mouth. I felt her tremble. I felt her heart pounding against my chest.

"Look at me," I said.

She did.

My voice came out dark and low, hungry in a way I had never once let her hear.

"I warned you, Elara."